Innovation

Yachting and Yacht Clubs

Posted on 16 July 2010

As the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the first yacht became a pleasure craft used mostly by royalty and later by the burghers on the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing yachts was incidental, arising as private games. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English monarchy in 1660, the city of Amsterdam sent him a 20-metre (66-foot) leisure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685 88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a 100 bet. Yachting became fashionable for the rich and aristocracy, but after that time the fashion did not last.

The first yacht club in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to racing boats was the chase, for which the fleet pursued an imaginary enemy. The club went on, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by joining with other groups, it became known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was first seen in some ordered method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be named the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing argument, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht group had been formed at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the continuing setting of British yachting. The society at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the accession of George IV. Each member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing matches for great bets were held, and the club life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to more than 350 tons.

In North America, yachting started with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English gained power. Sailing was largely for fun and reached its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and set a standard of luxury and sophistication for the later yachts in the area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
Early sailing yachts followed the lines of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the later half of the 19th century. The design of bigger yachts was originally largely put upon by the win of America, which was created by George Steers for a association headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) was named after its victory at Cowes in 1851. Early yachts were not designed and manufactured in a contemporary sense, with only a model used. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was known as naval architecture come into action. Not until the 1920s did the use of the research of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such science had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had been individually built, there was a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule came into being, which resulted in the International Rule, accepted in 1906 and edited in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to standard dimensions in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing those boats can be held on an even par with no handicapping required. A great example is the standard International America’s Cup Class adopted for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting was an activity mostly for the aristocracy and the affluent, money was no problem, and the size of boats grew, in both length and weight. The rise and popularity of smaller craft occurred in the second half of the 19th century from the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A trip around the world (1895 98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray made plain the seaworthiness of smaller yachts. Following this in the 20th century, notably after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became more common, down to the dinghy, a favoured training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Post the decade 1840 50, in which steam started to replace sail power in market vessels, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in leisure vessels. Large power yachts were developed to a high standard, and long-distance cruising turned into a favoured pastime of the well off. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; they then made way to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht archetype for several years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were exclusively power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the design of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service during World War II.

As bigger and more reliable internal-combustion engines were developed, many bigger craft were using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. From the decade following that, big power-yacht creation flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. From that period the biggest auxiliary yacht constructed was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The manufacture of larger power yachts lessened in 1932, and the style thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, many small naval craft were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. By the late 20th century, yachting had become a widespread loved activity enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen who are actually sailing and upkeeping their own small recreational boats. The amount of yachts and yachtsmen has increased steadily, not only in the traditional locations on the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes.

Looking for boat detailing Brisbane ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices.